Hackergate: the gift that keeps on giving...

Rupert Murdoch really does have a fight on his hands.

Rupert Murdoch, yesterday.

As news broke in the House of Commons that the government would back Labour calls for the Digger to withdraw his bid to fully takeover BSkyB, it was also clear that across the pond, the story was generating  plenty of headlines.

The New York Times was able to tell its readers that “former Prime Minister Gordon Brown brought new and alarming charges to the broadening scandal enveloping Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Britain, accusing one of the most prestigious newspapers in the group of employing “known criminals” to gather personal information on his bank account, legal files and tax affairs.”

It was also reported today in The Independent that Mr Brown had “tried to secure a judicial inquiry into the conduct of News International while he was in power, but faced resistance from the police, Home Office and Cabinet Office.”

We don’t even need to revisit the ugly intrusion into Brown’s family life; let’s just cut straight to the chase and look at how the establishment has in the past dealt with previous intrusions into the private life of Gordon Brown.

2003 investigation sandbagged

The Guardian had lots more on this type of thing and one wouldn’t necessarily be a conspiracy nut to see something untoward in the conduct of the judiciary as evidenced by the following account.

Essentially, Brown was among a number of Labour deputies whose details had been passed through corrupt police officers to private investigators. This had been revealed by a Plymouth police investigation conducted in 2003. Despite the serious nature of the criminal breaches at issue and the fact that they amounted to unauthorised surveillance of members of Her Majesty’s Government , trial judge Paul Darlow “refused in 2005 to regard the issue as sufficiently serious to go to trial.

Despite being in full possession of the facts, Darlow went on to prevent a jury from hearing the case, saying the alleged behaviour was “too trivial to justify criminal misconduct charges, and the proposed trial would be a waste of public money”.

The Guardian piece boxes clever. It succeeds in painting a rather disturbing picture of an extensive secret network of bent coppers and shady investigators in the employ of chequebook journalists but it lacks the crucial forensic link to News International and merely offers speculation about how Brown was out of favour with Rebekah Brooks as a result of his interminable feud with Blair.

There's no place like Home Affairs 

There were however more tangibly unpalatable truths served up for Rupert’s edification when Peter Clarke, the former Met officer in charge of the original phone hacking inquiry, accused News International of failing to cooperate with the police when he addressed a Commons Home Affairs Select Committee hearing this afternoon.

His summation of News International is worth recounting: “Would you expect criminals to co-operate with the police? Of course you don't. But this is slightly different - and I don't mean to be flippant - from someone taking the lead off the church roof. This is a major global organisation with access to the best legal advice, in my view deliberately trying to thwart a police investigation.”

In the interests of balance, it should perhaps be pointed out that as the man who oversaw that original investigation, Clarke would be understandably keen to keep the spotlight fixed firmly on News International rather than holding his own conduct up to scrutiny in the unforgiving HD glare of the 21st century media pack...

Follow the money

But back in the US, there’s evidence that investors are tiring of the Digger’s dictats. In the state of Delaware, a lawsuit was filed yesterday by three major News Corp shareholders;  Amalgamated Bank, the Central Laborers Pension Fund and the New Orleans Employees Retirement System. The suit accuses News Corp's senior executives and board of a dereliction of duty by failing to tackle the phone hacking sooner.

News Corp’s share price has fallen about 14% in New York over the past week and while the announcement of a $5bn share buy-back has stemmed the haemorrhage, at least temporarily, this is not over, not by a long way.

At the time of writing, it remained to be seen how the near certainty of the British Government voting against the BSkyB deal would play on Wall Street.  Rumours continue to circulate that Murdoch will sell off all his UK newspapers. Even if true, would it be too little too late? Is this ‘the emperor’s new clothes’ moment? 

• Click here to find out what we thought about all of this back in March of this year.